by Carrie Levine - Publications - Faculty & Research

28 Nov 2005
Research & Ideas

Unilever: Transformation and Tradition

as a result, but also avoiding disasters. The ice cream and other foods businesses were built patiently by the acquisition of one local firm after another, and their melding into the Unilever model. Following the National Starch... View Details

Keywords: by Geoffrey Jones; Consumer Products

28 Apr 2003
Research & Ideas

Supply Chain Risk: Deal With It

Back in the early 1990s, managers of U.S. companies were justifiably proud of the well-oiled machines they'd made of their supply chains. Over the previous fifteen to twenty years, they'd wrung costs from the mechanisms and processes by... View Details

Keywords: by David Stauffer

16 May 2000
Research & Ideas

Getting the Message: How the Internet is Changing Advertising

In 1994, the World Wide Web was not yet a household name. A new company called Yahoo! had just developed a way to look for sites on the Internet—the search engine. HotWired debuted as the first online magazine to carry advertisements.... View Details

Keywords: by Susan Young

27 Oct 2008
Lessons from the Classroom

Achieving Excellence in Nonprofits

toward other interests. Staying on mission and building an effective organization to carry out the mission requires a clear strategic focus and a well-developed strategy backed by well-aligned operations.... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

26 Jul 2006
Research & Ideas

The Strategic Way to Go to Market

Is there any distribution system more poorly conceived than the one used by most U.S. car manufacturers and dealers? In the prevailing system, car prices are initially jacked up by locked-in labor... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

08 Sep 2003
Research & Ideas

A Bold Proposal for Investment Reform

Finally, we recommend that the external auditor problems can only be solved through a major change in the relation between auditors and the companies they audit. This may be achieved by making the audit committee responsible for hiring... View Details

Keywords: by Ann Cullen; Financial Services

21 Oct 2013
Research & Ideas

Missing the Wave in Ship Transport

industry: dry bulk carriers, which primarily carry iron ore, coal, and grains; cargo ships, run by companies like Maersk that rent container space; and fuel tankers. In 2011, Dry bulk ships made up about 40... View Details

Keywords: by Kim Girard; Transportation

02 Apr 2008
Research & Ideas

Four Companies that Conquered America

demanding market for almost everything from oil to microprocessors to premium coffee. Companies around the world aspire to do business in the U.S., or at least with U.S. companies in their home markets. By doing so, they learn much about... View Details

Keywords: by John Quelch

16 Jul 2020
Research & Ideas

Restaurant Revolution: How the Industry Is Fighting to Stay Alive

It’s never been easy to make money in the restaurant industry. A highly fragmented sector dominated by 70 percent independent owners and operators, the average restaurant’s annual revenue hovers around $1 million and generates an... View Details

Keywords: by Michael S. Kaufman, Lena G. Goldberg, and Jill Avery; Food & Beverage

10 Nov 2003
Research & Ideas

Globalization: The Strategy of Differences

operations—and, ultimately, other activities—wherever in the world they could be carried out most cost effectively. By 2001, GEMS obtained 15 percent of its direct material purchases from, and had located 40... View Details

Keywords: by Pankaj Ghemawat

16 Feb 2010
Research & Ideas

The Outside-In Approach to Customer Service

According to a new book by Harvard Business School's Ranjay Gulati, it is customer-centric firms—those with a so-called outside-in perspective—that are most resilient during turbulent markets. An outside-in perspective means that... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Gilbert; Consumer Products

05 Jul 2006
Working Paper Summaries

The Cycles of Theory Building in Management Research

Keywords: by Paul R. Carlile & Clayton M. Christensen

07 Jan 2019
Research & Ideas

The Better Way to Forecast the Future

Grushka-Cockayne, that executives should adopt a similar approach when it comes to using probability forecasts of business-critical issues; for example, the likelihood that product demand will increase by a given percentage next quarter.... View Details

Keywords: by Roberta Holland; Air Transportation; Transportation

15 Oct 2007
Research & Ideas

Businesses Beware: The World Is Not Flat

Thomas Friedman, author of "The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century", opines that a number of events ranging from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the rise of the Internet have flattened the competitive landscape worldwide View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

04 Oct 2021
What Do You Think?

How Do We Make Sure the Right People End Up with Power in Organizations?

into the force. They were seeking the power over others that wearing a uniform and carrying (and using) a weapon would afford them. As a result, the selection process was altered, but of course the effects of the change would take years... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

18 Jul 2023
Research & Ideas

Will Global Demand for Oil Peak This Decade?

Is the globe’s thirst for oil finally topping out? A major international energy watcher says yes, predicting last month that demand for global oil for transport will peak around 2026, plateau for all uses by 2028, and possibly hit a zenith by the end of the decade.... View Details

Keywords: by Alvin Powell, Harvard Gazette; Energy; Industrial Products; Auto; Green Technology

29 Jan 2018
Book

How 'Teaming' Saved 33 Lives in the Chilean Mining Disaster

unknowingly bring different taken-for-granted assumptions about how to carry out this or that technical procedure to collaboration. Reprinted by permission of Emerald Publishing Ltd. Excerpted from Extreme... View Details

Keywords: by Amy C. Edmondson; Mining

01 Nov 1999
Research & Ideas

John H. Patterson and the Sales Strategy of the National Cash Register Company, 1884 to 1922

Henry B. Hyde of the Equitable Life Assurance Society published Hints for Agents, which contained persuasive arguments for company representatives to rehearse. Canvassers for the American Bible Society carried booklets with helpful... View Details

Keywords: by Walter A. Friedman

02 Oct 2006
Research & Ideas

Negotiating in Three Dimensions

negotiating set-up. Negotiators sometimes can discover hidden sources of value and then craft agreements to unlock that value and overcome barriers created by poor deal design. Now let's move to some errors in our most familiar first... View Details